The Cineskinny

The Edinburgh Festivals are back, baby, and there's none more relevant to this podcast than the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Ahead of opening night, Peter, Ellie, Anahit and Jamie discuss Nathan Silver's Between The Temples, Alice Lowe's Timestalker, and Maryam Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha's My Favourite Cake.  Because it's Festival time, we also make some Fringe recommendations, forget...

On this week’s podcast, the gang review two great new films with very different perspectives on the trans experience – Levan Akin’s Crossing, and Jane Schonebrun’s I Saw The TV Glow. Jamie gives his first thoughts on the EIFF programme, we all pitch in on The Bear season three (crossfade one more time, I dare you, I double dare you mother-), plus a few more bits and bobs. Massive shout-out to EHFM...

On this week’s show, we’ve been watching films centred on gender-non-conforming characters.  We’re looking at Orlando, My Political Biography, which is a playful essay film about trans identity from Spanish philosopher Paul B. Preciado, and Unicorn, a British drama about the relationship that forms between a straight mechanic from Essex and a drag performer from a conservative Indian family in Man...

We're back to a full complement this week for a B-movie bonanza. Russell Crowe is back on his anti-demon beat in The Exorcism (bad), Dale Dickey is out for revenge in The G (better), and we all chat about some of our favourite genre movies. Anahit fills us in on Lina Soualem and Hiam Abbas' new documentary Bye Bye Tiberias so we can keep our arthouse credentials, then we fling it all away talking...

We’re going to be talking about a really big expensive movie and a tiny indie film on this week's show, but coincidentally they are both about marauding gangs of road warriors fighting over natural resources, so there’s definitely a bit in common there. That big film is George Miller’s bombastic revenge saga Furiosa, and the smaller film is Weston Razooli’s nostalgic kids’ adventure fantasy Riddle...

George Mackay is one of the most interesting young actors from these shores and a firm CineSkinny favourite. We were massive fans of Mackay's recent film, Femme, from last year, and barely an episode goes by on the pod without us mentioning the wonderful Pride. Back in March, we sat down with Mackay while he was visiting Glasgow Film Festival for the UK premiere of The Beast, a heady sci-fi romanc...

This time on The Cineskinny, we go running in the fields of streaming cinema. Anahit reviews Hit Man (good!), Jamie joins her for The Idea of You (bad! and weird!), then the whole gang discusses the good, bad and ugly of the streaming revolution. How many of Netflix's top ten films are actually elaborate pranks on this podcast? More than you'd think! We also discuss the inventive, intriguing and v...

On the latest episode of The CineSkinny we go raking around in Etruscan tombs with a very sexy Josh O'Connor and his band of rapscallion grave robbers in La Chimera. We then head to 90s Edinburgh to revisit Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave. Does it still feel fresh 30 years later? Was renting in Edinburgh a nightmare back in 1994 too? Can Ewan McGregor actually act? Tune in to find out. We end the show...

It's been sunny in Edinburgh for the first time in weeks. We recorded two hours later than usual. Challengers is a very hot film. One or more of these may explain the slightly feral nature of this week's podcast, in which we review freewheeling US 'satire' The Sweet East and Luca Guadagnino's latest, as well as playing the film nerd equivalent of Fantasy Football in honour of the Glasgow Film Fest...

This week we dive into the hallucinogenic world of Disco Boy, which stars European arthouse cinema's current It boy Franz Rogowski as an undocumented Belarusian immigrant who joins the French Foreign Legion. We also take a look at Evil Does Not Exist, the latest from Ryusuke Hamaguchi. This Japanese filmmaker has amassed a cult following but he's still to convince some of our hosts on the pod. Wil...

In honour of Hayao Miyazaki bagging his second Oscar, Peter, Ellie and Jamie take a speedrun through the Ghibli back catalogue. Come with us and we'll meet some magical woodland creatures, smash the fash, do a whole load of flying and catch up with some hot boys along the way. We also look ahead to Glasgow Short Film Festival and HippFest which begin... oh crikey... now. Go to them! Listen to this...

With the 20th edition of Glasgow Film Festival nearing its close, we sat down with two of our favourite critics, Carmen Paddock and  Rory Doherty , to discuss this year's proceedings We also review GFF's blistering opener Love Lies Bleeding, share our Viggo Mortensen stories and review the mind-bending new film from Bertrand Bonello, The Beast. Plus Rory and Carmen pick out some of their GFF highl...

Another missive from the Glasgow Film Festival. On this one, we chat with the mighty Viggo Mortensen. Yes, Aragorn himself! The Lord of the Rings and A History of Violence star was in town for the UK premiere of The Dead Don't Hurt, a sinewy western that Mortensen wrote, directed, composed the music for and starred in.  Set in the 1860s in a small Nevada outpost, The Dead Don't Hurt is both a beau...

We're back at Glasgow Film Festival for some special episodes made on the ground at the festival. First up, we have a chat with Saint Maud director Rose Glass, whose blistering second feature, Love Lies Bleeding, opened the festival.  Love Lies Bleeding is a wonderfully lurid neo-noir thriller starring Kristen Stewart as Lou, the owner of a grimy gym in Nowheresville New Mexico, who begins a passi...

The gang's all back, and this week we're talking all things Glasgow Film Festival. We've got vampires! Gunfights! Drag queens! Orthodox monks doing kung-fu! Other stuff! Ellie, Jamie, Anahit and Peter also have a chat about upstart film competition 'The Oscars', aka 'The Academy Awards'. See, they haven't even settled on a title yet, amateurs. Peter has a coughing fit, Anahit is jet-lagged and buz...

This week, we take a long hard look at Jonathan Glazer's excellent new film The Zone of Interest, then have a chat about some of the more unsettling films we've watched. In the middle, we talk through literary/race/politics satire American Fiction, and up top there's a bit of The News to shout out Glasgow Film Festival and Manipulate Festival. TIMESTAMPS: Manipulate, GFF and the Cineskinny Film Cl...

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Dogtooth etc) returns with the hugely anticipated Poor Things, adapted from Alasdair Gray's brilliant riff on Frankenstein. Are we angry he didn't set it in Glasgow? Did its sexual politics shock us? Do we rate Willem Dafoe's Scottish accent? Listen to find out. Also on the show, we review Andrew Haigh's devastating All of Us Strangers, and given that...

It's our now-annual end of term wrap-up, as The Cineskinny gang discuss some of our favourite bits from the past twelve months. We're talking Music! Crochet! Kids! Chaos! Sexiness! All the classics... Follow the team on Twitter @ptrsmpsn   @anahitrooz   @jamiedunnesq   @lew_rob_ , get us on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok @thecineskinny, email us at cineskinny@theskinny.co.uk ; recorded at EHFM, Sum...

It's the end of the year, sort of, so we're running through ten of 2023's best films. Peter, Jamie, Anahit and Ellie race through a list of challenging, exciting, engaging hits from the past year – with a pleasing number of narcissistic wrong 'uns for us to judge and mock. The Skinny's Top Ten films, upon which this whole pod is based: https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/opinion/the-skinnys-films-of-...

On this week's episode, we take a trip back to the halcyon days of 2006 for Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn where Barry Keoghan brings chaos to a family of aristocrats. We also take a look at Tish from Edinburgh-based filmmaker Paul Sng, which acts as a tender portrait of unsung Tyneside photographer Tish Murtha.  And inspired by Barry Keoghan's very horny and freaky performance in Saltburn, the team c...

On this week's episode, we discuss two great new films – Molly Manning Walker's energetic and unsettling How To Have Sex, and Justine Triet's topsy-turvy courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. In honour of How To Have Sex's unflinching portrayal of a neon-soaked jaunt to Malia, Anahit, Peter and Jamie discuss some of their favourite on-screen holidays – a lot of Italy, a lot of poor decision-making, a...

This week we dive into one of the most anticipated films of the year with our review of Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama depicting the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma. And with the BFI launching their humongous Powell & Pressburger retrospective this week, we review their brilliant 40s romantic comedy I Know Where I'm Goi...

Jamie, Peter and Ellie revisit the bleeps and bloops of Blackberry, Matt Johnson's top-notch retelling of Research In Motion's rise and fall. Also this week, the gang enter the steam of the sauna for Estonian doc Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, then take an icy dunk in the waters of what Peter has dubbed 'big-brain business boys'. Your Patrick Batemans, your Ray Krocs, your fella from Aliens, etc etc. TIM...

Things get a bit meta on this week's Cineskinny. Ellie and Peter discuss Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson's inventive and exciting documentary A Cat Called Dom, then we chat about Sebastián Silva's bacchanalian meta drama Rotting In The Sun. We share our favourite gigs on film, Peter loses it about halfway through but gets it back again, [add a third here explaining the chat section thanks x]....

On this week's podcast, Jamie, Ellie and Peter escape the heatwave with two films of varying quality – Celine Song's much-hyped Past Lives, and outsider artist doc A Life on the Farm.  We then get into a chat about films about films, cos we're cool like that, and Anahit saves the day by dialling in from Venice Film Festival. Molto bene, and so on and so forth. TIMESTAMPS: Past Lives review (01:55)...